Jacksboro's Tap Water Was Cleared in Three Days. The Spring Behind It Is Still an Open Question.

On August 13, Caryville-Jacksboro Utility Commission customers were told not to drink, cook with, bathe in or wash their hands with their tap water. By noon on August 16, every restriction was lifted. For most households, that was the end of it.

It wasn't the end at the utility. As of CJUC's August 20 board meeting, the station where the problem started was still closed. The state had recommended new equipment before it reopens, and staff had raised rate adjustments for customers. Nearly two months later, we have found no public report that settles any of those three items. The tap water got fixed fast because the problem came in through one spring. Whether that spring is protected now is a separate question, and the public record hasn't answered it yet.

Three Hours Upstream of Cave Springs

In a statement carried by WLAF, CJUC described the source this way. The state had required the Campbell County Road Department to move diesel-contaminated soil from a site, then store and cover it for later disposal. During the August rains, water leached from that storage area downhill into a karst depression. The depression feeds an underground aquifer about three hours upstream of CJUC's Cave Springs water supply. Small amounts of the runoff got into Cave Springs, went into the utility's raw water storage, and after processing reached a small part of the service area.

Not everyone told the story the same way. WVLT reported that the soil had been stored at a gas station under construction. The LaFollette Press reported that the county highway department said the source had not been established yet and that it was cooperating with TDEC and CJUC. We found no later state finding that settles which account is right.

On one point every account agrees. The contamination moved through the rock, the kind of path no water main repair can close. Karst carries surface runoff underground and out of sight, and here it ran straight to a drinking water intake. That is why the state's recommendation, covered below, matters more than any single test result.

How Three Days Played Out

The scale was big enough for a lot of people to notice. The utility serves about 5,500 customers, and the affected plant supplies roughly a third of them, according to WVLT. Nearly 500 customers called to report a fuel smell.

• Thursday, Aug. 13, about 9:45 a.m. CJUC suspects a supply contamination. A precautionary no-contact order goes to every CJUC customer, though the greatest concern is in East Jacksboro and Jacksboro. LaFollette Utilities says its separate system is not affected.
• Aug. 13 through 15. Crews shut down the affected plant, flush hydrants and lines over and over, and sample the whole system, not just one zone.
• Saturday, Aug. 15. Restrictions start coming off in stages. Caryville-area customers served by the Cove Lake plant are cleared first. The Posey Hill, Cave Springs, Mount Paran, Eagle Bluff and Lakewood tank zones move down to "Do Not Consume." Bottled water goes out at Caryville City Hall starting at 8 a.m. and at Jacksboro Middle School starting at 10 a.m. Jacksboro Fire Department on Main Street is also a pickup site.
• Sunday, Aug. 16, noon. All remaining restrictions are lifted. CJUC reports its sample results as undetected and below established health limits, and the decision is made in consultation with TDEC.

The quick recovery came from a blunt first step. CJUC general manager Frank Wallace explained the order of events to WVLT:

"As soon as we found out what it was, we shut the plant down. We immediately started flushing all of our hydrants in the system, where affected water would have flown out too, and started sampling."

Shutting the plant is what made the rest of the timeline possible. It also explains why the plant was still down a week later. Turning a station off cuts the connection to a contaminated spring right away. Turning it back on is the step that needs a reason to trust the spring again.

Plenty of help came in during those days. CJUC bought two truckloads of bottled water for Jacksboro Middle School. The county's emergency management director told the LaFollette Press that KUB had offered a warehouse full of water. Food Lion Feeds donated more than 500 cases of 24 bottles each to Open Arms Ministry in Jacksboro. ADUSA Distribution Center 5 trucked the water to the LaFollette Food Lion, and store associates delivered it to the ministry. Jacksboro's mayor thanked town police, fire, street and administrative staff, along with volunteers, CJUC, Campbell County EMA, the schools, local businesses, private residents and TDEC.

The Second Advisory Was a Different Problem

A week after the fuel order ended, some of the same streets were under another advisory, and many people likely assumed the two were connected. They weren't.

Late on Sunday, Aug. 23, a water main broke under the Park Road bridge and pressure dropped sharply. On Aug. 24, CJUC put customers in Mt. Paran, Posey Hill and Park Road under a boil-water advisory. The utility lifted it on Aug. 25 after repairs were done and water quality tests came back clean, as reported in the LaFollette Press. Pressure loss calls for a bacterial precaution, which is a separate concern from fuel. WBIR reported that Jacksboro Elementary closed because of the break, and that Caryville Elementary and Jacksboro Middle were also under the boil advisory. WLAF carried the all-clear on Aug. 26.

So in two weeks, the same system showed two different weak points: a spring open to whatever runs into the karst above it, and a main exposed at a bridge crossing. The Park Road break has a clean ending, with a repair and a lifted notice. The Cave Springs problem doesn't have one yet.

What the August 20 Meeting Left Open

The commission held its regular monthly meeting on Aug. 20. The LaFollette Press account is the most recent public update we found on the fuel incident. Board members heard that tests had cleared and the water was safe. The same report left three items open:

1. The station. "The water station at the site is currently still closed." We found no later report of it reopening.
2. The monitor. The state recommended a system for when the station comes back online. It would detect possible contaminants and immediately shut the station down. On Aug. 16, Wallace told WATE that CJUC was working with engineers on that kind of equipment. We found no public record since then of it being approved, bought, priced or installed.
3. The bills. CJUC staff said they were ready to handle rate adjustments for the inconvenience of the advisory. We found no report of a credit amount or an adopted change.

The monitor is the item most closely tied to the cause. A spring fed by karst can pick up runoff from ground the utility doesn't control. An automatic shutoff is the state's answer to that, and it would replace what happened in August, when about 500 phone calls served as the alarm.

The same meeting covered longer-term work too. The commission approved sending a drinking water asset management plan to the state. The report described it as a year in the making and covering everything the utility owns. Commissioners also approved a pay request on the Collins Industrial Park ARC water tank grant and plans for the Perkins Hill Phase III sanitary sewer. The coverage didn't tie any of those items to the fuel incident.

Coverage also didn't spell out the exact address boundary of the affected zone. It names East Jacksboro and Jacksboro and lists the tank zones, but it doesn't say street by street whether a particular subdivision was inside the line. Wheeler Landing is one of them.

Where the Answers Will Come From

None of these questions needs a records request. According to CJUC's website, the Water Board meets at 7 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month at the Caryville-Jacksboro Utilities main office in the City Municipal Building in Jacksboro, and the public is invited to take part. Going by that schedule, the September meeting fell on the 17th, and we found no published coverage of it. The October meeting would be this Thursday, Oct. 15. That date comes from the published schedule, not from a posted agenda.

The same page lists Franklin D. Wallace at 423-562-9776 for questions about your drinking water. The station's status, whether the monitor was approved, and whether bills will change are all questions that phone number or a Thursday evening at the municipal building can answer.

At Alco Builders and Realty, our builder roots mean we pay attention to the systems behind Jacksboro homes, including who supplies the water and where. If you're thinking about a home or lot in the CJUC service area and want to talk through how utility service works there, schedule a consultation.